Justin Amash: The Last Republican in America – By Andy Kroll (Rolling Stone) / Nov 12 2019
He was the first Republican to call for Trump’s impeachment. Now, he’s quit the GOP, and is betting his political future that there’s room in conservative politics for anything other than Trump
Jason Pye has never told anyone this story, not on the record. It’s about Justin Amash, the Michigan congressman. Earlier this year, Amash was the first Republican to call for President Trump’s impeachment. After his colleagues branded him a loser and a traitor, Amash quit the GOP and switched his party affiliation to independent, gambling his political future on the quixotic notion that there is room in conservative politics for anything other than Donald Trump.
Sitting at a coffee shop in the basement of the U.S. Capitol, Pye drops a snuff pouch in his lower lip (“Can’t get rid of all the redneck, right?”). A Georgia native who likes punk rock and to soup up guitars in his spare time, Pye is the top lobbyist for FreedomWorks, the anti-tax, pro-free-market libertarian group that scores members of Congress based on how sufficiently conservative their voting records are. Amash is one of the few lawmakers with a 100 percent lifetime score and one of Pye’s most reliable votes in Congress. Amash can also be infuriating. That’s where the story comes in.
In late 2017, having failed to repeal Obamacare, Republicans were desperate for a win. They chose tax cuts. For procedural reasons, they first had to pass a budget bill to get a vote on taxes. To the party leadership like then-Speaker Paul Ryan, the budget bill was a placeholder, a means to an end. To Amash, it was a mess of a bill larded with billions in new spending that would skyrocket the federal deficit.
Pye didn’t love the budget bill either, but without it, there were no tax cuts. So Pye blasted out an email pressuring members of Congress to support the bill; those that didn’t would take a hit to their score as a “true conservative.” When he got back from lunch, there was a banker’s box on the couch in his office. No note, no return address. Inside was every trophy FreedomWorks had awarded Justin Amash.
Politicians take tough votes all the time, holding their noses to get something passed. Only Amash would get so upset at being asked to compromise his beliefs that he would respond with a gesture any reasonable person would interpret as: Fuck you. “He really is one of the most principled lawmakers out there,” Pye says. “Sometimes, he’s principled to a fault.”
Continue to article: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/justin-amash-trump-impeachment-independent-republican-910739/
